Three of the highest grossing films of all time – Titanic (1997), Avatar (2009) and its sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) – were produced by Jon Landau, who has died aged 63 of cancer. Asked to define his relationship with James Cameron, who wrote and directed all three, Landau said: “Jim dreams the dreams and it’s my job to make them a reality.”
Landau’s own dreams during the shooting of Titanic were more like nightmares. In one, he dreamed that the production’s colossal replica of the ill-fated ship was built entirely from toothpicks, and began to collapse under the weight of all the passengers.
Cameron admitted the film had already exceeded its budget before he even called “Action”. As it went further into the red, and over schedule, the pressure from the studio became intense. “And I was the guy who I believe got the brunt of it,” Landau told the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “It was very difficult, because I wanted to please all three masters: the studio, the director and the movie.”
His job involved no end of trouble-shooting. When it became clear that the construction of the ship’s main exterior would be delayed by two months, he rejigged the shooting schedule at short notice. “He kept us going,” said Cameron.
Landau was rewarded with a cameo of sorts during the film’s spectacular climax. “There’s a scene in the movie where a guy hits a propeller,” he pointed out. “That is a digital version of me.”
Industry gossip, fuelled by schadenfreude, had long predicted that Titanic the movie would go the way of Titanic the ship. Instead, it grossed $2.2bn, made megastars of its lead actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and won 11 Oscars including best picture. During a frantic acceptance speech, Landau thanked at least 45 people.
Titanic is currently the fourth most successful film and one of only five 20th-century titles in the entire top 100. In the number one spot is Avatar, an ecological science fiction fable set on the planet Pandora, populated by the peaceful Na’vi race of 9ft-tall powder-blue humanoids with amber eyes and swishing tails, as well as garish beasts that resemble a line of Gaultier-designed dinosaurs.
The film had been in the offing for many years while Cameron waited for technology to catch up with his vision. Fortuitously, the project came to fruition just as 3D was back in fashion, allowing audiences the most immersive possible experience of Pandoran life. It raked in $2.9bn.
A sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, took $2.3bn, which was enough to put it at third place in the chart. As with Titanic before it, the Avatar movies made huge advances in the use of CGI, changing cinema irrevocably, and not always for the better.
Despite the necessary financial emphasis on any producer’s résumé, Landau was known as far more than a numbers man. Warren Beatty, with whom he co-produced Dick Tracy (1990), singled out his best quality, telling him: “You dream about the movie.”
For Landau, the surest measure of a picture’s success was not found on a balance sheet. “Do I walk away from the theatre having felt something emotionally? That’s how I view a movie that I go to as successful.” But he was also a pugnacious figure, and stories of his shouting matches with Cameron were legion. Nevertheless, the director said: “We trusted each other 100%.”
Prior to going freelance and producing Titanic, Landau had collaborated with Cameron at 20th Century Fox, where he was head of production. They worked together on the action comedy True Lies (1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Strange Days (1995), directed by Kathryn Bigelow and co-written and co-produced by Cameron, her ex-husband.
Joe Roth, Landau’s boss at Fox, said he would “fight for the film-maker as much as he would fight for the studio if he thought something was right for the movie.”
He was born in New York to Ely and Edie (nee Rudolph), who were also producers. Their credits together included the spy comedy Hopscotch (1980), starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. Ely was known for screen adaptations of stage classics such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962), with Katharine Hepburn, and The Iceman Cometh (1972) starring Lee Marvin.
Jon was educated at the University of Southern California film school in 1983, then started out in assistant roles on various movie sets. He worked his way up through production, and co-produced Disney’s family comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1988). He joined Fox in 1989 as executive vice- president of feature productions, helping to shepherd a run of hits including Home Alone (1990), Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Speed (1994).
Other projects included Steven Soderbergh’s version of Solaris (2002), the Stanisław Lem science fiction novel previously filmed by Tarkovsky, and the Manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel (2019), both of which Landau and Cameron co-produced under the director’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment.
His final credits include a third Avatar movie, which is in post-production and due for release next year, and the planned fourth and fifth instalments, scheduled for 2029 and 2031 respectively.
He is survived by his wife, Julie (nee Lamm), and their sons Jamie and Jodie. Julie and Jamie were stunt performers on Titanic.
• Jon Landau, film producer, born 23 July 1960; died 5 July 2024
